Tag: Piracy

What makes people download pirated music? Karla Borja and Suzanne Dieringer, economists at the University of Tampa, surveyed 1,052 college students enrolled in introductory business classes at two Florida universities (one public and one private) in 2014 and 2015. Seventy-eight percent reported to have downloaded music illegally in the previous month.

Borja and Dieringer reason that streaming services and digital piracy are either substitutes or complements. If substitutes, streaming could put an end to piracy. If complements — where listeners use a streaming service to discover new music and then download it illegally — streaming might have no negative impact.

DECENT encrypts content and stores it in redundant pieces across the peer-to-peer network. In order to assemble and view it, you must possess the proper key, which may require you to purchase the content with DCT tokens. The original uploader is permanently recorded, so any attempts to upload a duplicate will be rejected by the network.

DECENT goes even further, however, with its utilization of digital fingerprinting technology. Theoretically, one could slightly alter a file so that its hash value was different (like by changing the color of a few pixels), but DECENT thoroughly analyzes all content to detect such copies. This prevents all copyright infringement on the network in a decentralized and autonomous way, protecting the original files.

The aim of this collaboration is to create a next generation content distribution platform in the adult video industry – which is plagued by illegal content sharing and concerns about privacy – set a new bar in the future of digital content distribution systems using digital video fingerprinting and by bringing in blockchain technology for Intellectual Property (IP) protection and privacy into the current technology mix, it said.

According to new data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, 49% of internet users between the ages of 16 and 24 reported stream ripping within the six months ended in April, up from 41% in the same period a year prior. Meanwhile, 30% of internet users of all ages reported stream ripping this year, a 10% increase over last year.

The trend is particularly troubling because the music industry—which has lost 60% of its value since its peak in 2000 and has barely expanded over the past five years—is banking on paid streaming services to fuel its growth.

An EU high court just handed a major win to content creators, holding that for-profit websites that hyperlink to unauthorized works are liable for copyright infringement.

EU law holds that “Member States shall provide authors with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.” At issue is whether posting a hyperlink to infringing content qualifies as “communication to the public.” In a ruling issued Thursday, the Court of Justice of the European Union held that — in the case of a for-profit website like GeenStijl — it does.

South African startup Custos Media Technologies, a company that uses the bitcoin blockchain to combat media piracy has reached an agreement with the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) that will see funding of 5.9 million Rand (approx. $400,000) gained by the startup over the next two years.

The technology, seen as a unique way to combat media piracy, works by embedding a bitcoin bounty within a piece of a media. The watermark can then be tracked on the blockchain with the idea of recognizing and identifying infringements when the media leaves the original recipient or buyer of the media.

Sydney startup Veredictum has launched a blockchain-based manuscript protection platform, aiming to shield creatives from having their ideas stolen before they sign on the dotted line.

Tim Lea, CEO of Veredictum, set out to create a script distribution model utilising a technology that he claims has not been used in the space previously. When designing the platform, Lea was eager to utilise blockchain technology, noting the industry has pockets of problems that blockchain presents the right solution to.